Goodreads Review: Twilight Falls on Liberalism

Twilight Falls on Liberalism by Rudrangshu Mukherjee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have the privilege of studying at the university where Professor Mukherjee is the Chancellor and Professor of History. I have attended some of his classes and been impressed by his command of the subject and style of delivery, and wanted to know how far his expertise was translated on to his writing. This was a major reason for my picking up this book, as also was my interest in the subject, and I must say that it was a worthy read.

Professor Mukherjee starts the book - closer to a long essay at 133 pages of a pocketbook - with introducing the current socio-political atmosphere around the world and the manner in which the ideology of liberalism is under attack from various fundamentalist and totalitarian forces. Then, true to his historian's method, he goes back to study the conception and growth of the idea of liberalism from its 18th century Enlightenment roots and its changing scope over the ages in keeping with contemporary world economy and polity. He touches upon the fundamental contradictions within the ideology and the paradox of its birth from the same roots that gave rise to totalitarian tendencies. He moves forward to discuss some of the critiques of liberalism and continues the chronological study of 20th-century eclipsing of the ideology through the rise of dictatorships across Europe. He traces the cyclical pattern of rising and diminishing popularity of the ideology through the century before closing with the 21st century socio-political attitude towards liberal ideals as displayed by the three major world events of the last several years - the election of Donald Trump in the US, Brexit, and the rise of right-wing governance in India with the coming of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister.

The major drawback in the book is the lack of analysis or at least historically moulded informed guesses as to the reasons behind the rising tide of totalitarian tendencies across the world. While Professor Mukherjee has touched briefly upon the economic meltdown of 2008 and the growing threat of Islamist fundamentalism as possible reasons for the decline of liberal beliefs, these interconnections could have been explored at greater length, providing a more nuanced understanding of contemporary world politics for the reader. This would have been particularly helpful for the lay reader since Professor Mukherjee's ability to explain complex philosophical and political ideas in lucid language makes this book intellectually available to a wide range of readers. That apart, this is a most interesting book by way of introduction to the political ideology of liberalism and is sure to get the reader enthused about learning more on the subject. 

View all my reviews

How I Came to Write a Paper on The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard

I took up History for my undergraduate studies because I love the subject. But in the last two and half years I have not written almost anything related to my subject, despite Baba urging me time and again to do so, and even supplying me with ideas about what I could write on. Hopefully I will  get around to working on one or two of them before I wrap up my formal education in History. Today though, I want to post something rather special and very dear to me. 

Term papers and regular written assignments should be a part of every academic curriculum. It isn't in my college though, particularly in our department, adding to an ever-growing list of complaints that many of us have against the department. But I don't want to gripe today. We did finally get a chance to try our hands at writing a term paper this semester for one of our papers on Modern Europe. The paper spans the time period between 1789 and 1848, a time of epoch making changes that the historian Eric Hobsbawm so rightly termed the Age of Revolutions. Our professor asked us to submit a paper on any event or aspect that would fall within the purview of our course.

The task was as daunting as it was thrilling. It was quite difficult narrowing down on any one topic from a period as intense and diverse as this. On top of that there were constraints of practicality - as an undergraduate student trying her hands at her first term paper with limited access to source material, and more importantly, time, there was only so much that could be done. Many of us came up with grandiose paper ideas in the initial excitement of the task and our race to impress the professor with originality, but these were quickly dashed when the paucity of time and resources as well as expertise dawned on us. 

How I came about writing on this topic is itself a funny story. This was in fact the first paper idea that had sprung to my mind; I have a distinctly easier time working with literature-oriented ideas, so this is hardly surprising. But my seniors warned me that the professor had a reputation for actively disliking the use of literature as source. I reluctantly gave up my plan and set about planning a paper with a rather convoluted theme involving deep history, environment and colonialism. I did not understand the idea very clearly - it was suggested by a senior - and went on postponing the work. So imagine my delight when the professor made a casual remark in class one day about how nobody in my batch seemed interested in working on literary topics. I literally jumped up from my seat with my hand in the air, and within five minutes it was fixed; I was going to work on Brigadier Gerard after all. Talk about lucky breaks!

For the next three days I worked harder than I had in the previous two years combined, and by the fourth day I was done, and in the nick of time too.I am rarely completely satisfied with my writings, but this one is an exception. I feel this is one of the best essays I have ever written. I was so pleased when I went through it, I realised that it did not matter to me whether or not the professor liked the paper and graded it well. He did in fact like it though, and while I generally find self aggrandizement distasteful, for one I will say that getting the highest marks in class was well deserved.

I hope some people will enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Baba has to be thanked of course, not merely because I consulted him constantly while writing the paper, but also because my love for literature as well as my inheritance of books comes from him. 

Also, it is Baba who suggested I put this one up on the blog. Thank God he is constantly after me about keeping this blog alive!

 History Through the Lens of Literature:

The Napoleonic Era as portrayed in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard

There is much debate among scholars over the appropriateness of treating literature as a historical source. Historians of the realist imperialist school of thought refuse to accept literature as a valid source, while liberal post-modernists are more open to the idea. However, sometimes the best practice may be to draw one’s own conclusions about such matters. For that, making a study of a famous piece of literature in terms of its historical validity is a useful step.   

Napoleon Bonaparte once commented “what a novel my life is”. Indeed, the Napoleonic era continued to colour the brightest minds of the world throughout the nineteenth century. The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a wonderful example of Napoleon’s impact on literature. Based at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, these are tales of adventure as narrated by the protagonist Etienne Gerard, now an old man living in Paris, about his days in the Emperor’s army. Across seventeen short stories, Conan Doyle, claimed by many to be the greatest storyteller in English literature, brought to life a period of great turmoil and flux making use of one of the most quintessential aspects of war: the soldier who tells tales to the enthralled civilians back home.  The tales work as a reflection of real battles fought by Napoleon’s army across Europe. Etienne Gerard, a Hussar in the Grande Armée during the Napoleonic Wars, originally from Gascony like Dumas’s d’Artagnan, spent the most glorious days of his soldiering life with the Hussars of Conflans. The young and dashing Gerard was the bravest soldier and the most gallant gentleman in all of France, or so he believed. The most outstanding quality about Gerard was his vanity, but his courage made a close second. Brigadier Gerard is probably the most loveable character created by Conan Doyle, and his astonishing conceit and remarkable thick headedness is not only forgivable but even enjoyable for the reader who savours a jolly good yarn based in one of the most exciting periods of human history.

The concern of this paper, however, remains the validity of the book in terms of its historical accuracy and content. And this is evident in almost every individual story in varying degrees. We learn about how Brigadier Gerard came to be a part of the Hussars in the story ‘How the Brigadier Joined the Hussars of Conflans’. The war having come to a halt in Germany but raging fiercely in Spain, Napoleon sent Gerard from the Hussars of Chamberan to serve ‘as senior captain to the Hussars of Conflans, which were at that time the 5th Army Corps under Marshal Lannes’¹ as reinforcement for the army in the Pyrenees. Here, Conan Doyle gives a very realistic picture of the second siege of Saragossa under Marshal Lannes, Napoleon’s personal friend about whom the Emperor commented that he had found the man a pygmy and left him a giant! The siege of Saragossa was symbolic of conditions throughout Spain. Doyle’s description of the city filled with hordes of Spaniard ‘soldiers, peasants, priests – all filled with the most furious hatred of the French, and the most savage determination to perish before they would surrender’ and the difficulties that the French soldiers faced in overpowering the city² is as accurate as any historian’s. Napoleon’s peninsular conquest is considered by many scholars as one of the early signs indicating his eventual downfall. As Gunther Rotherberg points out, the great general failed to take into account the potential of a popular resistance supported by the armed forces with a secure supply route, while also being deluded about the precarious food supplies for his own army and the difficulty in movement and communication in Spain³. Ultimately, Napoleon’s ‘Spanish Ulcer’ played a significant role in his inevitable demise.

The same story also brings to light other factors of interest to the historian. In describing his adventures, Brigadier Gerard made repeated mention of the reputation of the Spaniards as cruel and prone to torture and mutilation. It is significant that of all the various reconnaissance missions that the brigadier carried out, this was the only one where he was given a vial of poison which he could use in case of capture. The Spanish reputation was borne out when Gerard found Monsieur Hubert, the French soldier whose mission Gerard had been instructed to complete, crucified to the walls of a house. The stories based on the Emperor’s peninsular conquests bring out various aspects of war as a whole, particularly the dark and inhuman sides of it, the side that the protagonist remained blissfully unconcerned about in the most part, focusing rather on the glory and honour of war. In Spain Gerard met some opportunists of the lowest order, ‘bandits, who embody atavistic values that enlightened Europeans thought they had seen the last of, and which can be seen in Goya’s paintings, the Disasters of War.’ In Spain he met El Cuchillo or ‘The Knife’, an ordinary man whose inner monster had been awakened by war, who was now a notorious guerrilla chief who found pleasure in blank verse and torture, such as burying French soldiers alive.⁴ Characters and events remained close enough to the reality to be an honest reflection of the experience of the Grande Armée in its peninsular encounters.

Throughout his stories, Conan Doyle placed his brigadier in battles and events the accuracy of which would make the historian proud. In ‘How the Brigadier Took the Field Against the Marshall Millefleurs’ Gerard was seen taking orders from Marshal Massena after his 1810 offensive was stopped by the English army at the Lines of Torres Vedras, lines of forts built in secrecy on the order of the Duke of Wellington to defend Lisbon from French conquest. The Marshal’s frustration at having to retire from a failed conquest is likely to have been very close to what the real Marshal must have experienced.⁵ It was to Torres Vedras that Gerard was sent by Massena to ascertain the distribution of  Wellington’s troops in ‘The Crime of the Brigadier’, and in ‘How the Brigadier Saved the Army’, he saved the troops of General Clausel from annihilation by lighting up the signal beacon for the general to fall back upon the main army, while himself coming face to face with the infamous guerrilla chief named Manuelo,‘ The Smiler’, and just about escaping with his life.

The Brigadier Gerard stories are a fascinating study of the prevalent view of the French and the English of each other, particularly to a student of cultural history. What is interesting to remember is that the author himself was an Englishman, and yet his hero belonged to the opposing camp. Gerard was excessively vain and conceited, a perception that Christopher Coker calls ‘a stock trope for a Frenchman in English literature, particularly in the late nineteenth century’⁶, and yet the Englishmen found in him a greatly loveable hero. Throughout his adventures, Gerard displayed admiration towards the English in various ways, particularly to individuals who he found honourable and came to consider as friends. In ‘How the Brigadier Held the King’ Gerard was rescued from the murderous El Cuchillo by ‘Milor the Hon. Sir Russell, Bart.’ with whom he struck up an easy camaraderie, a camaraderie that turned to partnership in the adventure of trying to capture Marshal Millefleurs, where the Bart had come with the same orders from Wellington as Gerard had from Massena: to hang the troublesome marshal. His disposition towards the English continued to stay unchanged even when he was captured by Wellington and sent as a prisoner to Dartmoor, from where he broke out and tried to escape before being recaptured and informed that he was in fact to be released and sent back to France in exchange of a Colonel Mason (How the King Held the Brigadier). The brigadier was particularly appreciative of the Englishman’s ‘sportsmanship’ even though his complete inability to understand English customs made him a source of extreme irritation to the English; in ‘The Brigadier in England’ he injured his English hosts while playing cricket and boxing through his misinterpretation of the rules of the games, and in ‘The Crime of the Brigadier’ he inadvertently destroyed a traditional English fox-hunt by killing the fox, earning for himself ‘a deep, steady and unchangeable hatred’ from Wellington’s army! And yet he earned the begrudging respect of several Englishmen for his heightened sense of honour.⁷ In the study of war, literature can sometimes be the best instrument to bring out the nuanced and contradictory interplay of human emotions between opposing camps, usually through the interaction of individuals.

The Brigadier Gerard stories are surprisingly accurate in the placing of some of Napoleon’s greatest Marshals. One learns about the various charismatic leaders from Gerard’s eloquently expressed admiration for them. There is repeated mention of Marshal Massena, ‘a thin, sour little fellow’ who was not a favourite with his men or his officials for he was a miser, who ‘clutched on to his positions as he did to his strong box, and it took a very clever man to loosen him from either.’⁸ Of Marshal Ney’s bravery in the Russian conquests Gerard said with great respect ‘one man above all rose greater as the danger thickened, and won a higher name amidst disaster than he had done when he led our van to victory’, calling him ‘Ney, the red-maned Lion’.⁹ Of Marshal Lannes he spoke highly in context of the siege of Saragossa. And yet despite the ample praise for their courage, there is sneaking criticism where it is due, worthy of any self-respecting historian. About the failed attack on the Lines of Torres Vardes, the brigadier made no bones about admitting that internal feud between Napoleon’s marshals led to missed opportunities. In his words, ‘Ney hated Massena, and Massena hated Junot, and Soult hated them all.’¹⁰ Of others one finds scattered references throughout the stories: Murat and Berthier and Mortier and Grouchy to name a few.

With the Emperor himself the brigadier had few encounters, but they were enough to set in stone his love and loyalty for Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte was a charismatic leader who had the power to draw the allegiance of the French not merely to the state but to him personally, through the Imperial Catechism, creating an almost cult status among his followers. He issued grandiloquent statements before and after battles, paying little heed to the truth and often fudging facts and figures to suit his conveniences. In the words of Gregory Fremont Barnes, ‘Napoleon was an unashamed self-publicist whose power rested on his extraordinary capacity to captivate his soldiers with his undoubted charisma and to win the hearts of the French people at large by feeding them on that heady diet whose appeal the revolutionary generation could scarcely resist: la Gloire - glory achieved on the battlefield’¹¹This feeling of absolute loyalty is evident in Brigadier Gerard, who considered laying down his life for the Emperor a matter of great honour. Napoleon himself chose Gerard for certain mission because of his unquestioning loyalty, such as in ‘How the Brigadier Slew the Brothers of Ajaccio’, where the Emperor needed to assassinate in secret some men from his Corsican past who had come back to haunt him, and in ‘How the Brigadier was Tempted by the Devil’ where Napoleon decided to test the loyalty of his men before setting them on a very delicate and dangerous mission. And yet the unequivocal devotion of the soldier to the Emperor remained unfortunately lopsided in its depth of emotion. There is an evidence of Tolstoyean irony in Gerard’s stories, in his lifelong faith and service to an Emperor who had little respect for him.¹² Napoleon chose Gerard for some of the most sensitive missions because he perceived the latter to be simple minded despite his enormous courage, even awarding him the special medal of honour along with the dubious honour of calling him the man with the thickest head and the stoutest heart in his army.¹³ Napoleon was callous towards the suffering and losses his army faced for him, and remained unmoved by the fact that his conquests cost France the flower of a generation.

Napoleon’s Russian invasion of 1812 was the beginning of the end of the great French empire that he had envisioned. The invasion was riddled with various problems from the start. The most prominent were the lack of supply lines; nine large depots had been laid from Konigsberg to Warsaw, but available means of transportation could not keep up with the advancing army. Also, the massive size of the army and its frontage required the creation of new command structures and army groups. The technical limitations of the era prevented either problems from being resolved.¹⁴ Brigadier Gerard and his Hussars never went to Moscow, staying back at the communication lines of Borodino. In ‘How the Brigadier Rode to Minsk’, Gerard spoke in sorrow and resignation of the squalor and devastation he witnessed all around. Conan Doyle used a Tolstoyean eye to describe the long, black lines of retreating soldiers, snaking their way across the white plain.¹⁵ It was in Russia that the French army faced the ruthless Cossacks, who laughed at them in their misery and hung around them like wolves, ready to pounce at the slightest sign of weakness. This air of gloom makes this one of the saddest stories of the collection, with Gerard’s own despondency almost a signal to the imminent downfall of his beloved emperor.

It is a fitting end to the adventures of the brave brigadier that he would be given an important mission in that final hour, the Battle of Waterloo – a mission that he failed to carry out due to fateful turn of events – eventually bringing a close to his glorious days in the Grande Armée with a final valiant effort to protect his Emperor from capture at the hour of defeat by impersonating him to detract his English pursuers. Though history dictates that this effort had to be in vain, the brigadier earned what was possibly the greatest compliment of his life from his enemies; the Englishman failed to realise he was an imposter and exclaimed in admiration that the French Emperor was “such a horseman and such a swordsman I have never seen.”¹⁷ By the time of Waterloo, Napoleon was well past his prime. He was wearied from years of campaigning and a year of exile, and ill on the very day of the battle. Waterloo led to Napoleon's final downfall, restored the balance of power in Europe and ushered in an era of nearly four decades of peace on the Continent, unquestionably qualifying the battle as one of history's most decisive.¹⁶

The last of the Brigadier Gerard stories holds that poignant note marking the end of something great. In ‘How Etienne Gerard Said Good-Bye to His Master’, we read of an attempt by an old faithful servant of the Emperor, with Gerard’s help, to rescue Napoleon from his exile in St. Helena, only for Gerard to arrive at the moment of his master’s death. It is the last tale that the old soldier told his eager audience before going back to Gascony in his twilight years. This is the condition of many soldiers spanning age and space, veterans unable to let go of the past, civilians but ‘with an air and manner’, relics of a time long gone. In his closing chapter, Conan Doyle successfully brought to light the human cost of war, not merely in terms of those who die, but those who are forced to reintegrate into civilian society, a mere shadow of their battlefield selves.

 Like all works of literature, The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard was essentially written to provide hours of enjoyable reading to the lay person, not to serve as a tool for scholarship for the historian. The tales are not a fair and balanced exposition of the Napoleonic wars or the French society of the time. The chronology is not linear, and there are so many fictitious incidents that sieving out fact from fiction is a tedious exercise. One glaring shortcoming of the stories is that the human cost of the Napoleonic epic is completely ignored. In his blind devotion to his master, the brigadier overlooked the fact that Napoleon, having extinguished liberty by enslaving half of Europe and fraternity by declaring war on the other half, had only just paid lip service to equality, even in his army.¹⁷ The stories are fundamentally action packed adventures of one soldier and not a representation of the army as a whole.

However, a student of history may yet do well to pay some attention to such works of literature in one’s studies. As has been adequately illustrated in this paper, Brigadier Gerard is an excellent example of all that literature has to offer to history, if only one knows how to extract reality from the generous coating of imagination that is any good work of fiction.  

Ruminations

Yesterday was the first official day of my summer vacation. I say first ‘official’ day because we have been on vacation since end of April for all practical purposes. Classes started dwindling since mid April and eventually got dissolved by early May, and after a brief ‘study leave’ our end semester examinations started on the 17th of May. I use the important sounding name – end semester examination – out of habit and to lend some gravitas to the situation. In reality, there were examinations on four days. Yes, just four days, and yet it had to be spread out across nearly three weeks. I have to give this to the private schools across the country, for all their endless problems and shortcomings they do usually manage to get over with examinations within a week or two, and that with nearly a dozen subjects on average. What does this say about our ‘elite’ public universities, and our national psyche in the matter in general? If there was ever a social decision to function according to the very antithesis of the ideal of “do it now”, it is the principle that guides our nation.

Examination days leave me feeling unsettled. I don’t think this has much to do with my level of preparedness. Even when I know that I have worked hard throughout the year and only unforeseen disasters could possibly make me fare badly in the paper, I cannot help feeling jittery and restless. I have a definite point of saturation beyond which I cannot revise, the words bounce off my head without making sense to me any longer. And yet I cannot concentrate on anything else either. Examinations seem to put my life on hold; they make me feel like I am in purgatory. If I ever have to spend any period of my life solely focused on preparing for any examination, I wonder whether I will be able to do it. I seriously fear that I will crack under the strain of preparations and revisions long before the actual tests come up.

As I walked out of the examination hall on the 5th of June, I realized with a jolt that I had officially finished the second year of my undergraduate course. Come July I will be starting on my final year here, the senior year in the Indian scheme of things. I don’t think the thought has sunk in quite properly yet; it seems like yesterday that I was walking in as the confused fresher who lost her way around the campus at least thrice a week. I look back and I realize the true import of the saying “the days are long but the years are short”. All those early classes with the attractive old professor, those initial days of bonding with seniors, that certain idealistic spark that formed our political inclinations and made us feel good about ourselves, the first tastes of the real world and the quick realization that followed about how inept our generation is at ‘adulting’ – the memories that threaten to flood my mind are bittersweet and each an engaging story by itself. The past two years have helped me grow and embark on a journey of self discovery, and I know I have only just started. I have a lifetime of exploration ahead of me, and that is one exhilarating thought.

Jadavpur has been home to me in ways I could not have thought possible. It has given me what I have always craved for – space. In Jadavpur I can be me, I can function within my own tastes and preferences without worrying about any external restrictions. I can be mad or composed, well turned out or bedraggled, a bookworm or a social butterfly, or an alarming mix of them all, and still find a cozy nook for myself there. I may or may not find like minded friends, but chances are I will not be actively shunned or made to conform to the tastes of anyone else. In a world that demands standards and norms and regularity, a short sojourn in this haven of disorderly but generally well-meaning people may well turn out to be soothing memory of a lifetime. I have met so many types of people here, strange and outlandish, starry eyed and optimistic, frivolous and forlorn, often quite eccentric. Some of them I have become close to, others I have only briefly come in touch with. A few I hope will continue to be a part of my life long after we have crossed the boundaries of college and gone on our very different paths. These two years have been wonderful, and I hope to have a terrific final year here, but now I am ready to leave. I can sense a certain loosening of ties, a certain longing for newer pastures, an urge to go out and explore. Just as I know that after the end of school, getting admitted to Jadavpur University had been the best option for me, I also know that I need to move on from here for the next step.

I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about what I want to do next, after completing my graduation. I do not want to carry on with History for my Masters, not because my love for the subject has dwindled, not at all, but because I have almost made up my mind not to pursue a career in the academia. I cannot see myself spending years writing theses and teaching reluctant college goers. I did not take up English for graduation, much to the astonishment of many of my peers, because I felt that reading literature as a part of my coursework will kill my love for it. Lately, I have begun to feel the same way about History as well. There is a sense of restriction that I suffer from; in spite of studying the subject I love I am often not able to study according to my own interests. My coursework needs me to focus on economic theories about modes of production when what I really want to read about is the history of modern Israel. I do feel set curricula suffocate academic curiosity; at least they do to me. I have this little personal joke where I think of my love for history or literature or any other academic subject to be like a man’s love for his mistress, which is based on sheer attraction and not social norms and legal expectations, and burns deep for that very reason. Once I am beyond the requirement of coursework, I feel I will be able to continue reading history as a passion for the rest of my life. In the meantime, I am on the lookout for anything interesting and unusual, anything that challenges my intellect and pushes me to learn. I am ready to go into the professional world and try my luck in different fields until I find something that suits my abilities and temperament.

This year has been a difficult one so far, and I can sense that there are more troubles lying in wait in the coming months. But there have also been many happy days and peaceful days. As time passes I get more and more convinced that life is nothing if not a mixed bag. It is on every individual to make the most of what they have, without worrying too much about all that they don’t. Tragedies will have to be faced, sadness will have to be dealt with, but it really does no good dwelling too much on them. Worrying just makes you suffer twice. And so I have decided to take each day at a time and make a conscious effort to enjoy myself as best as my situation allows. It was with that spirit that I began my vacation, taking myself out to a movie after the examination ended – the last movie of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is a fun watch by the way, a fitting end to a successful series – and enrolling on an interesting online course about the ancient Egyptian civilization. I am looking forward to a fulfilling month, a refreshing break before starting out on the final leg of college life. 

Young Historians' Symposium 2016

Everybody living in India who has not been living under a rock for the past few weeks knows that a great debate has been raging about anti-nationalism and sedition, which had its birthplace in JNU university with the arrest of their Student’s Union president Kanhaiya Kumar. Unsurprisingly, students at Jadavpur University have stood up in solidarity with those demanding the release of Kanhaiya Kumar, and as a result the campus has been rife with discord and disharmony. In fact, students have become so preoccupied with the issue at hand that another landmark event has been nearly overshadowed. The department of history organized the first student’s seminar held over two days. This is remarkable not only because it was the brainchild of undergraduate students and organized by themselves, but also because I overheard out head of the Department comment that such a large-scale seminar is not even organized by the department of history in JNU, the most elite university of the country.

It gives me immense pleasure to claim that the Young Historians’ Symposium – as the seminar has been named by common consensus – was a success, and the response was remarkable given that it was the first time such a seminar was being organized by the department. Held over the 16th and 17th of February, we had paper presentations by students from various departments and institutions, and a debate to end with on the last day. Though it was nowhere near a full house, the audience that was present was still significant, especially since attendance was not compulsory. The kind of hard work and preparation put in by the participants was commendable. But I will come to this in a bit. For me, the success of the seminar brings pleasure on a deeper level. It is a sign of the enthusiasm and dedication of the students of the department, and the loyalty and love we have for our department despite the endless barrage of complaints and frustrations each one of us vents about it every day. The Economics department has been organizing their own students’ seminar for a number of years now, and the International Relations department also has numerous seminars each year. So it is good and right that the department of history should catch up in this regard, not least because it is a matter of departmental prestige and pride.

I remember the first day we heard about the seminar. It must have been some time in October, or was it November? My friends and I were lazing about, as we do, after classes ended, when I suddenly got a call from a senior asking us to join a delegation from the department that was headed to the vice-chancellor’s office for a meeting. We had no idea what this was about, but the prospect sounded exciting, and ever since Hok kolorob visiting the VC en masse has became a statement of protest, an expression of independence in the minds of many, so we joined the group without much ado. On the way we managed to squeeze some information out of those in the know: a departmental seminar was to be organized in February in Gandhi Bhavan, one of the auditorium halls in the university, and we were going to request (read coerce!) the VC into allowing us a waiver on the hall charges for the seminar. That sounded exciting, and I think mentally many of us prepared for a shouting match of sorts. That turned out to be completely unnecessary though, because the VC was happy to oblige. Mr. Suranjan Das, our present vice-chancellor, is himself a historian by qualification, and as soon as he heard our request he called up the exchequer and got us the required waiver. “Amar i department, eta kore dao” or something along those lines over the phone, and it was done. Thus the foundation was laid.

For much of the last months of 2015 and throughout early 2016, the seminar was on the top of a lot of peoples’ minds. The idea had first been proposed by some students of the third year, and naturally they were the most closely involved. Since my friends and I have quite a rapport with some of them, we used to hear first hand news about the progress made and the obstacles faced by them. As is the case in every group, some people work themselves weary, others sit and enjoy the fruit. Those in the former category happen to be my friends, so I often heard them fuming about the attitude of classmates and others involved, the tendency to upstage each other and the unfairness shown by those in power. Hearing them talk about their troubles, I often wondered why they bothered to take so much responsibility in the first place, especially since it was such a thankless task most of the time. But I suppose some people cannot help it; they just have to keep at it, no matter what.

Formal meetings about the seminar started taking place sometime in late October. Very few people from the first year were present. Nobody seemed interested in getting involved. The standard excuse was “We are just going to watch this year.” Be that as it may, a couple people, myself included, volunteered. In the first meeting the volunteers were appointed to specific committees. I was made part of the fund-raising committee. Somebody joked that I was now to be the official beggar of the class, chasing everyone for money for the seminar! There were about a dozen committees to begin with, ranging from abstract collection and report-writing to sponsorship and collaboration and food committees. More were added in later meetings – our HOD decided that a separate committee was required for serving tea during breaks! – and afterwards I was also made a member of the ‘flying squad’ to be in charge of the law and order situation during the seminar. Not that I had to do anything on the seminar days! But it was fun having my name on paper!

The bit that I remember most clearly about that first meeting was the debate over what the seminar was going to be called. This was after the professors had left. The students gathered around in a tight circle and suggestions started flowing. There was more fooling around than anything else, but the common consensus was that the name should not be a repetition of the seminar names used by any other department, and also state clearly that this was an initiative of the history department. ‘Young Historians’ was almost agreed upon, but ‘Meet’ was clichéd, and so were some of the other terms suggested. Eventually the gathering broke up and the discussion was carried on to the Facebook page started for the seminar. Travelling to Durgapur the next morning, the word ‘Symposium’ occurred to me. I suggested it on Facebook, and everybody liked it. So now I can claim with some pride that the seminar organized by the department has been named by me (though I try not to strut too much about it: this was a joint effort and my contribution was minuscule).

I will not be going into the details of every single meeting; though all of them are a perfect mixture of exciting and hilarious in my mind, it will be a tedious narrative for the readers. Suffice it to say that we met a number of times over the next couple of months, and though I did not have much to offer during the meetings myself, I found it interesting to keep updated on the progress made in terms of paper submission and collaboration with other universities and arrangement of sponsorship and things like that. The one down side of the seminar though was that the seniors became really busy with all the preparations and could spare almost no time at all to hang out with us. I enjoy spending time with them, and so I missed that.

And then, and then! Finally it was February the 16th. Actually, my friends and I had been all hyper for days before D-Day, planning out our attires to the minutest details (girls will be girls!). I must admit somewhat shamefacedly that on 16th I spent more time in front of the mirror dolling up than I usually do in a month. I was there at the venue by ten in the morning. A handful of the seniors had stayed back on campus the previous night to get things ready. It had been a busy night for them with little sleep, but my, did they look handsome that morning! Or maybe it was just me; all that departmental pride and loyalty was getting projected on the organizers. Anyway, we were soon inside the hall, and made ourselves comfortable in a nice shadowy corner. I had been given the responsibility to hand out food coupons to my classmates, but apart from that I had little to do, so I could very well concentrate on the seminar.

On the first day there were three technical sessions, on local and regional history, state and warfare in history and society and culture from pre-modernity to modernity. There were five speakers in each session chaired by various professors of our department and other universities too. From the first session, my favourite paper was one on the cultural and religious elements in the making of Vishnupur in 17th century Bengal by two students of our department. The speakers were eloquent and delivered well-researched papers, and even had pictures to display at the end of the session. The speaker who eventually went on to win the Best Paper Presentation award was also from this session, a student from the Department of Sociology from Presidency University, who spoke the connections of the goddess Kali and the naming of the city ‘Kolkata’. Another very interesting paper was also delivered by a student from the same department, titled ‘The evolution of wrong: on the question of moral turpitude among the peoples of Bengal’. Though this paper was, unsurprisingly, more on the lines of a sociological discourse on gender roles in terms of the creation of various taboos in the Bengali society, it was a well thought-out presentation and very interesting.

The next session, following a tea break where we were provided with food packets from the cake shop Mio Amore (a sponsorship that involved a lot of running from pillar to post, or so I hear), was the one on military history, and I must confess that I was not paying a lot attention during this. But the one paper that I listened to and found interesting was on non-state armed groups and their potential as state builders. The final session of the day was after yet another break, and this one was important for us, because we had a classmate presenting a paper in this session. Anwit Shahi from first year presented a paper titled ‘Protestant ideologies and statecraft – Ashoka’s Buddhism and Henry VIII’s Anglicanism’. He was wonderful, and this also happened to be the paper most understandable to the students of UG1 since the subject was close to what we have already studied. Apart from Anwit, there was also Anupam Da from the second year who presented a paper on cricket in colonial India, which was a hit among sports enthusiasts.

That was where the first day ended. We went home tired but happy, though some of us got caught up in the protest that had been organized in solidarity with JNU that evening. Anyway, on to the next day. There were two technical sessions on the 17th, the first on environment, economy and society, and the next on women’s studies. I got caught up with some work at home that day, and so I arrived late and missed out on the sessions. I did not however miss the lunch box provided that day. This again calls for praise to the seniors, some of whom themselves handled the entire arrangements right from shopping for rations to distributing the boxes for nearly three hundred people. Post lunch, there was the debate – Dialectic – and the motion proposed by the house was ‘Donald Trump is a product of American racism, just as Hitler was a product of German anti-semitism’. Two of my classmates – Manami Mondal and Annewesa Ghosh spoke against the motion, and both were very good. It was an interesting debate, and the coordinators did their job wonderfully. Eventually the majority of the audience as well as the judges seemed to be of the opinion that the arguments of the defender teams were stronger than the opposition. It was a fitting wrapping up of the seminar.

All those months of preparation and anticipation, and it was over in forty eight hours! But they were a wonderful forty eight hours, and already I cannot wait for the seminar to happen again next year. The students of the department hope to make this an annual event, as with the Economics department seminar. Next time round, I hope to be able to take a more active part in the business of organizing the seminar. This time, my participation had been token at best. The one regret that I have is not being able to present a paper this time. This was because of some miscommunication towards the beginning, as I was under the impression that members of any committee were not allowed to present papers. When I found out I could in fact present one, there were hardly seven days left until the deadline. So next time I am most definitely presenting a paper; and now that I have a year to decide and work on a topic, there will be no dearth of time.

The contribution of the third year students was phenomenal, as it was they who did practically everything, right from coming up with the idea of the seminar. Dipro da and Vishal da deserve a special mention – they looked after almost every aspect of the seminar. Of course were many others too, whom I would have mentioned by name if I knew them! As it is, the JU Young Historians’ Symposium is now a reality, and will, God willing, continue to take place every year and benefit students of every batch to come. To think that we were there at the start!...just suppose I come to attend one fifty years later?

Anwit being challenged with questions

Dialectic - Annewesa speaking

YHS 2016 professors and volunteers